Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has directed the Customs department to not destroy seven works by renowned artists FN Souza and Akbar Padamsee seized last year for being “obscene material”.
A division bench of Justices MS Sonak and Jitendra Jain on Monday reserved its order on a petition filed by a firm, BK Polimex India Pvt Ltd, owned by art connoisseur Mustafa Karachiwala, who had acquired seven artworks at two separate auctions in London in 2022.
The works were seized by the Customs department in April last year. They include a folio of four erotic drawings, one called ‘Lovers’, by Souza. The other three are a drawing titled ‘Nude’ and two photographs by Padamsee.
As per Karachiwala’s plea, Souza and Padamsee are renowned artists and have been conferred prestigious awards by the Indian government. It stated the order for seizing the works is a violation of fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of India.
Filed through advocates Shreyas Shrivastava and Shraddha Swarup, the petition states, “The subject work of art is a national treasure of modern art which needs to be given its due recognition. However, the Customs officials have failed to understand their significance and failed to differentiate between art and obscenity,” the plea said.
